I love Scotland - I was made an honorary Wallace after my work on 'Braveheart,' you know. If I have two or three days off, I love nothing more than driving up there and climbing around Glencoe.

I met Picasso when I was a kid. I turned one of his drawings down which would be worth £37 million now. My dad wouldn't talk to me for a fortnight.

I've become quite a serious explorer: I've been to Everest three times; I'm the oldest man to reach the North Pole; and I've just been to the lost world of Venezuela.

The greatest danger in life is not taking chances. There are so many negative people wanting to grind you down, but you can't let them. If people say you are mad, you know you're on the right track.

Wishing kindness and compassion to all living creatures.

The misapprehension about me is that I am some loud, rampant maniac. I am actually very pensive and quiet.

There will be no funeral! Before I get too old and ill, I'll go to South America and live among the Pemon people and meditate. When the time is right, they can throw my body into the volcano.

I fed my Yak on my spare Cadbury chocolate 21,0000ft up Everest. It was a blonde, very sweet female Yak. I made it my pet after that.

In the news this week, the polls continue to slide for Gordon Brown and some people are saying he's dead and buried. But I think the opposite - I say GORDON'S ALIVE!

I'll never retire. The new millennium is the age of adventure as far as I am concerned. I'm going up a volcano and off into space.

My dream is to own a Hockney - I'm a Yorkshireman, and his vibrant colours are a good example of how the north-country people are vibrant and colourful.

Intelligence is power

Be a reflection of what you want to receive. TRUST is the beginning of CONNECTION

She was thinking she needed to post a letter in the Lonely Hearts column in the Silver Town Gazette: She-wolf seeking male wolf who believes in ghosts. No others need apply.

A writer has no use for the clock. A writer lives in an infinity of days, time without end, ploughed under.

I gave my voice to poetry.

When you work with somebody for a long period of time, you develop a shorthand with everything.

During the work, you have to be sure that you haven't left any holes, that you've captured everything, because afterwards it will be too late.

Reading is seeing by proxy.

Your proudest moment is to watch your egg not just function, but to achieve on her own.

Flattery won't hurt you if you don't swallow it.